Talkin' Trash
Page 45

I tried to hand the baby off to Bayou, but the moment that I even acted like I was going to let go of her, Mila started to scream.
Sighing, I did what any daddy in that situation would do.
I took her with me to the front and waved at Sasha when her pouting face found me.
“Dance!” I whisper-yelled at her.
Sasha shook her head vehemently.
That’s when I knew what I would have to do next.
I hopped up on stage—I mean, it was only family and friends there anyway, what would it hurt? —and helped my daughter do her dance.
Only, what I didn’t realize, was that the press had followed me in. Oh, and of course, they’d gotten the entire thing on tape.
My daughter and I were an international dancing phenomenon by the next morning, and we hadn’t even realized that we were performing for the world.
My daughter could care less.
I only prayed that Conleigh wouldn’t disembowel me when she found out.
She didn’t, but only because I’d made a damn fool of myself in the process.
***
Later that night, after our children were in bed, I found my wayward woman on the back patio, swaying on the porch swing.
“What are you doing?” I asked, looking over Conleigh’s shoulder.
“Looking at patio furniture on Wayfair,” she answered, looking back at me. “Why?”
I grinned. “You can’t shop for furniture off the internet. What if you get it here, and it sucks? What if it’s so uncomfortable that you refuse to sit on it?”
She frowned. “That’s…ludicrous. All couches are the same.”
My brows rose. “Um, no they’re not.”
She lifted her nose up at me. “I bought that one online.”
She pointed to the piece of shit that looked like my dog—and I didn’t even have a dog—took a shit on it. It was that outlandish.
“Did you know it was going to be that particular shade of brown?” I questioned.
She pursed her lips. “No. But…since I was new here, and I didn’t know anyone, I got the one I wanted because they had free delivery and setup. I thought that it was a normal brown.”
I chuckled. “That wouldn’t have happened if you’d have gone to an actual store. And, just sayin’, most stores have free delivery, too.”
If you asked for it, anyway. They weren’t going to advertise that it was free if you didn’t ask.
“Interesting.” She paused. “But I didn’t know of any stores in the area that sold patio furniture besides Lowe’s, and I don’t want to buy cheap shit that’s going to take fifteen years for me to put together and will most likely fall apart by the end of summer. I want stuff that’s going to last. Stuff that’ll still be good next summer, and the summer after that, and the summer after that.”
I lifted a strand of her hair and absently started to play with it.
She sighed and leaned her head back, her eyes closing as she groaned. “I love my hair being played with.”
I filed that little tidbit of information into my memory bank and started to mess around by braiding a few strands. “You could learn how to French braid, and then do my hair for me every morning. I hate ponytails, they make my head hurt by the end of the day.”
I made a mental note to look up YouTube videos on how to French braid later as well.
If it meant being with her more, then I’d do it in a heartbeat.
“I’ll get right on that,” I teased. “But, from what I’ve heard, French braiding takes small, nimble fingers—and that’s something I don’t have.”
She gently extracted her hair from my hand and examined the braid. “It looks really good to me and let me tell you something. Your fingers are nimble. I’ve seen you throw a football. Catch a bad snap. That takes skills. Your fingers are works of art. I damn well know that if you wanted to, you could make beautiful braids.”
She was teasing—at least partially—but I had a feeling that she really meant what she said.
Not to mention the blush on her face also indicated what she was thinking my fingers could also do—like what I’d done the previous night.
“The girls asleep?” she asked.
I rounded the swing and took a seat next to her, pulling her in close and twisting my head so that I could drop a kiss on her forehead.
“Yes,” I answered, eyes closing. “They’ve been asleep for about twenty minutes now. I was watching them sleep.”
She snorted. “I think you watch them sleep more than you sleep yourself.”
That was true.
I did watch them sleep quite a bit.
“Did you get the house cleaned up to your standards?” I teased.
She sighed. “Our parents will be here tomorrow for Sasha’s birthday. I can’t have a dirty house when they come over.”
I refused to point out that we’d had the cleaning lady come and clean it twice this week, once because it was her normal day to do it, and once because Conleigh had seen a smudge of dirt on a baseboard and called her back out to clean all over again.
Needless to say, Conleigh was a taskmaster when she was pregnant, and I had no one to blame but myself for that one.
“If this baby is a girl,” Conleigh yawned. “We’re getting a bigger house.”
I snorted.
We were still in the same house that we’d started at in the beginning—my three-bedroom two-bath non-fancy home. But, she was right. If this one was a girl—which I somehow knew it would be—then we needed a bigger house. A boy would be comfortable in the office that we’d turned into a small baby room, but a girl would need room. Something that I already figured out when their closets filled up with their clothes.
But it wasn’t just Conleigh buying the dresses—GOD, so many dresses!—it was my stepmother and Conleigh’s mother as well. Hell, even my dad bought the girls things!
“I’ve been telling you for two years now that we needed a new place, but you were adamant that we hang out in this one until we outgrew it,” I teased.
Her head shook as she laughed. “It has sentimental value.”
It did.
That I agreed with.
“You know,” Conleigh said around another yawn as she typed something into the search engine on the computer. “You have more hits with Sasha than you did with that little baby you held as I took her blood. Did you see?”
Then Conleigh pulled the YouTube video up and showed me, embarrassing me all over again.
“God, I look like a dweeb.”
I’d been wearing my shorts hiked up because I couldn’t get down far enough to show Sasha how to do the movements correctly without doing so, and I had my long socks from practice on that came halfway up my shins.
That, and our daughter had thrown up on me halfway through the performance.
But, the world loved it.
“At least they got something good this time,” I muttered. “It could be like when you gave birth to Mila and that paparazzi got a big ol’ vagina shot.”
Luckily the club members—Hoax being the main one—had caught the reporter before he could do anything with the picture.
The only one to see the shot had been me when I’d deleted it from the camera and destroyed the camera card for good measure.
She pinched me in the chest. “Shut up.”
I did, but only because I wanted to kiss her.
“I love you, Conleigh James.”
She sighed. “I love you, too, Lincoln James. Even though you have weird camera guys following me around and taking crotch shots.”
I laughed. “He paid for that.”
And he did.
I’d kicked his ass, and Hoax had helped me.
It’d been the last time that a reporter had tried to take any such shots of my wife and kids since.
And I hoped it stayed that way.
If it didn’t, I’d just make another example out of the next photographer that thought he could violate my privacy like that all over again.
Because in the end, I’d do anything to protect my family, even risk prison time.